


and i'm so willing to care for you

by rooonil_waazlib



Series: You're So Thrilling [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, brief mention of steve/others but it's really only like one line, bucky's kitties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 13:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14717262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rooonil_waazlib/pseuds/rooonil_waazlib
Summary: “Um,” Steve says, and Bucky looks back at him, a cat perched on each shoulder, a third one climbing up his jeans. “Do your roommates mind the cats? Is that—is that the problem?”“What?” Both of Bucky’s hands are occupied with helping the kitten climbing him. Another cat has detached from the group and is standing in front of Steve, looking up at him. He looks down at it. It’s a light orangey-yellow, and it has no tail. “No, Steve—thesearemy roommates.”Or, wherein Bucky owns a lot of cats.





	and i'm so willing to care for you

**Author's Note:**

> listen, i don't know where this came from. truly this was based on a single joke i made at one point and then all of a sudden i was writing a whole fic just to furnish it. i will give a full fourteen points to the person who can figure out what that joke is.
> 
> (lisa is a horrible enabler and you can all [thank her](http://lisa-in-the-sky.tumblr.com) for this.)
> 
> also, the art is used with permission of [the artist](http://baka3k.tumblr.com). the post where you can reblog the art is [here](http://baka3k.tumblr.com/post/172569031854).
> 
> finally, you can find me [here on tumblr](http://rooonil-waazlib.tumblr.com). sometimes i post snippets there!

With summer just arriving, Steve finds himself outside most days, taking advantage of the heat to remember just why he’s always loved New York so much. He doesn’t always have time for this—missions keep him away more often than not—but if he’s got half an hour here or there he’s out the door and turning his face up to the sun.

This way, too, he knows he’s being seen; if Bucky is watching, he’ll be visible—on tabloids, social media, and in person. After their sojourn in Wakanda, Bucky’d wanted space. So Steve had left him, come home to New York. And Bucky had vanished—whether on purpose, or because Steve had purposefully stopped looking, he didn’t know. Sometimes he’d receive a postcard in the mail—Aruba, Tokyo, Dubai—his address printed in Bucky’s square script; but there was never anything else written on them. Not even in invisible ink. Steve had checked.

It’s the first really sticky-hot day of the year that he stops in at an artisanal sandwich shop and nabs the last table on the patio. He orders pastrami on rye and a side salad and crowd-watches as he eats, sipping a soda.

Still, he somehow misses Bucky until he’s vaulting the patio fence directly into the seat across from him. He reaches across the table toward Steve’s plate, pulling his hand back only at the last second.

“No fries? Fuck.”

Steve stares.

“Jesus, Steve. You break your jaw? Pick it up off the ground; this is New York. The sidewalks ain’t exactly clean,” Bucky says.

Steve snaps his jaw shut so quickly he actually bites his tongue. Bucky looks—healthy, more like the normal New Yorkers Steve sometimes sees around than anything: his beard neat, wavy hair a little longer than he’d kept it when they were young, but much shorter than it had been in Wakanda. His black leather jacket fits him precisely, making his shoulders look impossibly broad. The grey-green shirt he’s wearing under it is soft-looking, stretched tight across his chest. He reaches across again, opening the abandoned sandwich on Steve’s plate and picking a slice of pastrami out of it.

“Never got why you like rye so much,” he mutters, stuffing the meat into his mouth. “I need some help.”

“Help? With what? I mean yes. I mean yeah. What can I do? What do you need help with? Are you—is everything—are you safe? What kind of help do you need?”

Bucky gives him an alarmed look. “What? I’m fine. I just need some help with my roommates. And my landlord. They’re arguing.”

“I—oh.” Steve blinks at him for a second before his words sink in. Something goes wobbly in him. “You have roommates? How long have you been in New York? Why didn’t you—?” For fear of breaking into angry betrayed tears, he shuts his mouth.

Reaching out, Bucky pats him on the shoulder. “Relax, Steve. I’ve only been back for like a few weeks. I had to get a place, and then I had to follow you around for a while to make sure you weren’t compromised. C’mon, let me show you my place. I’m not sure I can stay there anymore.”

Automatically, Steve digs his wallet out. He throws down a couple of twenties—more than enough to pay his bill—and pins them under his plate, then stands when Bucky does. Bucky jumps back over the fence, and Steve does the same, ignoring the woman’s voice yelling, “Hey!” behind him.

It’s only a few blocks to where Bucky is living; he doesn’t even seem to want to shake any potential tails. Instead he leads Steve straight to a dingy building that nonetheless has a distinctly community feel. An old woman pats Bucky’s cheek as he holds the door for her on their way in.

The unit is on the fifth floor. When they arrive at the door, bronze 5C sign crooked, Bucky flattens his ear to it for a second before sticking his key in the lock and walking right in. Steve follows, still looking at the back of Bucky’s neck like it can answer every question he doesn’t know how to ask.

It’s...loud in Bucky’s apartment. Steve doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but—it isn’t this. The wood floor around Bucky’s feet is teeming with fur, cats climbing over one another and meowing at him. There must be at least a dozen, most kitten-sized, a few adults. “Shut the door so they don’t get out,” Bucky says.

Doing so, Steve backs up a little, a faint itch at the back of his nose. He’s not allergic to cats—not anymore—but the sight of so many of them brings back the corporeal memory. “Um,” he says, and Bucky looks back at him, a cat perched on each shoulder, a third one climbing up his jeans. “Do your roommates mind the cats? Is that—is that the problem?”

“What?” Both of Bucky’s hands are occupied with helping the kitten climbing him. Another cat has detached from the group and is standing in front of Steve, looking up at him. He looks down at it. It’s a light orangey-yellow, and it has no tail. “No, Steve—these _are_ my roommates.”

Steve doesn’t speak immediately, not sure what to say. At least Bucky hadn’t found human roommates—he’d have been jealous of that. But he’s jealous enough of these many animals who Bucky clearly feels completely content with touching him. “So what’s the problem?”

“My landlord said I’m not allowed to keep pets,” Bucky says, “so I need to move.”

The utter bizarreness of this finally hits Steve, and he tries not to giggle. “I thought you said they were roommates.”

Bucky flips him off and crouches to shove both hands into the fray, petting anything within reach. “They are, but my landlord doesn’t see it that way. So. You got any ideas where I can go?”

“I, yeah, you—you can come live with me.” The cat at Steve’s feet meows; though it’s still quite small, its voice is loud, indignant.

“That’s Steve,” Bucky tells him, pointing to the cat. “Steve, meet Human Steve.”

Both Steve and Cat Steve look over at Bucky. “Why does he get to be just Steve?” Steve asks. “How come I have to be Human Steve?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “Not everything revolves around you, Human Steve.” He leans over and scritches at Cat Steve’s ears. It hisses and swipes at his hand, which he retracts just in time. “And Steve here is a girl.”

Steve frowns. “You named a girl cat after me?”

“I named a cat that fights everything after you. That urge appears to be gender neutral.” The cat on Bucky’s left shoulder rubs its face against his beard; he makes kissy sounds at it.

Cat Steve paws at his shin. “Should I pet her?” Steve asks.

“You can try,” Bucky says. “She’s not really a petting kind of person. Maybe that’s why I called her Steve—all she wants to do is fight everyone who’s just trying to love her.”

Crouching, Steve holds his hand out so that Cat Steve can sniff it. When she appears to be satisfied, he carefully runs his knuckles over her forehead and around her ear. She purrs, rubbing her whiskers against his palm. Steve looks up at Bucky, who’s glaring at them both.

“You think you know someone. Steve’s only just now letting me touch her, and only sometimes. You suck, Human Steve.” Bucky stands, holding three cats to his chest, and shuffles through the fur pile. The apartment is otherwise kind of nice: there’s a couch; a twin-sized bed standing at almost chest height, a cloth draped around it so Steve can’t see what’s underneath; a little kitchen. The window is open. “Your place?” he asks. “How does Stark feel about cats?”

“Bucky—the window,” Steve says. “Is that—safe?”

“The cats need to get in and out somehow,” Bucky says, sounding supremely unperturbed. “Stay on task, Human Steve. The cats. Stark.”

Sighing, Steve shrugs. “I think Pepper likes them,” he says. “Don’t know about Stark. Who cares, really, though.” He stands up, scooping Cat Steve up into his arms as he goes. She meows but lets him do it. “You got a suitcase? And maybe, you know, a cat carrier?”

Cats draped like towels over his metal arm, Bucky walks over to the bed and pulls aside the cloth. He sticks his leg under there, hooking a suitcase with his foot and shoving it out, then an enormous pet carrier that was probably made for a Great Dane. “There’s some catnip under the sink,” Bucky says, gesturing that way with his free arm, “can you pull it out? We’ll need it to get these dudes into the carrier.”

The catnip is in an airtight tin; Steve heads back toward Bucky, setting Cat Steve down as he goes. She yowls at him, nipping at his heels as he walks away from her. Bucky points into the open carrier, one cat held in his hand. “Shake some in there—not too much, just a little,” he says, and Steve does so. The cats start yelling, practically, clumsily climbing over one another to get into the carrier, and Bucky kisses the kitten he’s holding before setting it down inside. He does the same with the other two in his arm, barely moving when the one perched on his head hops off and into the carrier too. Steve picks up the foot that Cat Steve is sitting on and gently shakes her into the carrier with her siblings. He nudges one or two that are trying to escape back in, and takes a quick glance around to make sure they’ve got them all before Bucky closes and latches the door.

Kneeling beside Bucky in front of the carrier, Steve peers into it. “How many are there?”

Bucky pokes two fingers in through the grated door. “The Duchess and Julius Caesar are in there, and all their kids, so—that’s sixteen. There are a few who just visit me sometimes. I’ll have to leave them a note so they know where I’ve gone.”

He doesn’t look at Steve when Steve turns to look at him. “Bucky, they’re cats.”

“Yeah.” Bucky sighs and looks over his shoulder at the suitcase. A blue-grey cat has appeared in it, sitting primly upright. “Oh, hey, Spoons. I can’t just leave them, Human Steve. They’re my friends.”

“But a note’s not going to help. They can’t read.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows at him, smirking. “You don’t know that.” He gets up, walking over to Spoons and picking him up for some kisses. “Still, I guess I’ll probably have to come back a few times and show them where we’re going to be living now.”

Steve sits on the floor and watches as he starts packing. It’s absurd that he’s jealous of a bunch of animals, but somehow he can’t help himself. They seem to really _know_ Bucky, his rhythms. They’ve gotten to spend time with him these last weeks. Bucky kisses them. He’s barely even touched Steve yet.

 

By the time they leave Bucky’s apartment, they’ve had to stuff another three cats (Bucky introduces them as Fatass, 1959 Chevrolet Biscayne, and Mrs. Nesbitt) as well as Spoons into the carrier, and it’s a very loud plastic crate that Steve lugs to the subway. Bucky follows, humming something that sounds suspiciously like It’s Not Unusual and rolling his suitcase. On the train Bucky sits on top of the carrier, leaning over it and arguing with the cats through the door. Steve doesn’t understand what the cats are saying, but it’s pretty obvious from their tone that Bucky’s refusal to let them out isn’t going over particularly well. There’s a woman watching them, and Steve wonders what she thinks of two large, well-dressed men transporting a million talkative cats on the subway.

For all that the cats don’t want to be in the carrier, when they arrive at Stark Tower they have to use more catnip to lure them back out of it. Steve scatters some on the marble floor, and Bucky unlatches the door. Slowly, a couple poke their noses out, and it only takes a minute or two for the bravest to venture out.

“That’s Julius Caesar. She’s one of the moms,” Bucky says as an adult cat sneaks toward the catnip. Cat Steve comes next. “You’ve already met Steve. Oh, this one’s Knife. She’s normally shy.” A chain of four or five kittens follow, all in a row—calico, white, another orange, and two black. “That’s Concrete, Toxic Nerve Agent, and Lord Sandwich. The two black ones are Lizard and Sphaerodactylus Ariasae. They’re twins.”

“Lizard and Sphaero. Gotcha.”

Bucky glares at him, petting Lord Sandwich as he stops to sniff at him. “Sphaerodactylus Ariasae. Unshortened.”

Steve grins and nods. Bucky had always had a soft spot for animals; when they were kids Bucky’d named one of the stray dogs on their block Trash Can and fed it table scraps until the day it vanished. It’s nice to know that all the time, all the violence hasn’t changed that.

Sitting there cross-legged on the floor of a huge apartment in Manhattan, Steve looks at Bucky, really looks. He looks relaxed, happy, with cats climbing all over him. There’s a touch of grey scattered through his hair and beard, crows’ feet starting at his eyes. The matte black arm attached to his left shoulder is veined with gold, and Steve watches the gentleness with which it touches each kitten. He knows what it feels like—Bucky’d touched him with that hand, once or twice, back in Wakanda—but it’s been a while, and he finds himself missing Bucky, even though they’re sitting barely three feet apart.

Cat Steve yawns and clambers into Steve’s lap, curling up with her face in the crook of his knee. He pets her, a little, not wanting to wake her. “The Duchess of Windermere found me first, a few days after I moved into that place,” Bucky says into the quiet, pointing to a big calico cat lying on her back and pawing at the air. “I thought she was just really fat, but a couple hours after she came through my window she gave birth. Eight kittens.” From his pocket he pulls a phone, which he thumbs through for a second before passing it over to Steve. It shows a photo of the Duchess of Windermere, reclining on the bed in Bucky’s place, a bunch of kittens no bigger than Steve’s fist lined up against her, nursing. “T’Challa called me crying when I sent him that picture. He said he’d send some gifts, but they haven’t shown up yet. I think they’re caught up at customs.”

“And Julius Caesar?” Steve asks, passing back the phone. Bucky thumbs around on it for another second then passes it back.

“Three days after the Duchess. She had six kittens.” This picture shows Julius Caesar licking Knife’s tiny head. “There are a few more—Spoons, Fatass, Chevy, and Mrs. N, plus like two or three others—but they mostly just visit,” Bucky says, and when Steve only nods, he continues: “I like them. It sort of feels like I’m in a crowd, but this way I’m not constantly searching for an exit. They’re—safe, I guess.”

As if she’s been listening to their whole conversation, the cat called Lizard screams just then and leaps up to attack Steve’s hand. “Ow! Bucky, they have knives in their hands. Five of them in each one, by the way,” he says, shaking his hand. Lizard just clings on tighter, sinking her teeth into his thumb. “Fuck, fuck—Bucky, that’s _twenty knives_ and I haven’t even counted how many they have in their mouths!”

Bucky reaches out, gently unhooking Lizard’s claws from Steve’s skin, which immediately starts to close up again. “She’s just playing, Human Steve,” he grumbles, cuddling her close to his chest. She gnaws on his metal thumb. “They’re predictable, alright? They like to play or they want food or you’re standing on their tail. Their knives are for self-defence. They never try to stab me for political reasons. I like that.”

 

The kittens begin to fall asleep around them pretty much as soon as the sun goes down. The adult cats stay awake a little longer, still exploring their surroundings. Steve gets stuck under Cat Steve and Garotte for almost an hour before his bladder starts to throb; when he slips his fingers under the kittens to move them to the couch, both yowl indignantly and give him disapproving glares.

He and Bucky stay up a while longer, the TV turned on low, talking now and then. Finally Bucky gathers Fatass into his arms like a baby and sits up. “Think I should probably get some rest,” he says. He doesn’t quite look at Steve. “Where should I—?”

“Oh,” Steve says. He’d been having such a nice time just looking at Bucky that he hadn’t even thought about it. “There’s a guest room, or—” Bucky nods, chewing his lip, and, well, he must not want Steve to suggest the other option—“yeah? Okay. Yeah. The guest room. It’s, here, I’ll show you.” Gently he shifts Cat Steve’s chin off his knee and gets up; Bucky does the same, still holding Fatass. Another couple of cats look up, making curious sounds as they grab Bucky’s suitcase from where it still sits by the front door. Steve leads the way to the guest room.

“Thanks,” Bucky says, standing in the doorway looking in. It’s pretty big, for a guest room: a king-sized bed, a bureau, an en-suite bathroom. He should be happy there. “Um, the cats—you might want to, you know, leave your door open. So they can go in and out. Otherwise they’ll meow all night.”

Steve nods. “Okay, yeah, I—sure, I can do that.” He takes a step back as Bucky walks slowly into the guest room. “I’ll—um, yeah. Goodnight, Bucky.”

Bucky turns back to him, holding Fatass up close enough that he can snuggle his face into his fur. “Goodnight, Steve,” he replies.

Before he can say anything really dumb, Steve beats it back to the living room, collecting his sketchpad and his cell phone and heading for his own bedroom. Cat Steve follows, and although Steve leaves his bedroom door open he does shut the bathroom door while he’s in there. He climbs into bed and opens his sketchbook while Cat Steve curls up in the space between his neck and shoulder, her little head resting on his Adam’s apple.

By the time he looks up, it’s almost midnight. On his page is Bucky as he’d been that morning, sitting across from Steve at the restaurant. Cat Steve is purring gently against his pulse. He pets her, trying not to move too much as he puts aside his sketchbook and switches off the light.

“What do you think?” he whispers, running his fingertips over Cat Steve’s back and looking up at the ceiling. She trills a question, her ear tickling Steve’s. “You think he’ll come back to me?” She doesn’t say anything, rubbing her whiskers against Steve’s stubble. “I just—Cat Steve, I miss him. I missed him _so much_ while he was gone and now he’s—here, but not…not _here_.” He resists the urge to look over at the empty pillow next to his. Cat Steve uncurls, then, and he sighs, expecting her to wander off. Instead she turns and climbs up onto his chest, resting her chin in the hollow at the base of his throat. She starts to purr, her whole body vibrating with it. He pets her. “Yeah, I don’t know either,” he says, and shuts his eyes.

 

There are four cats curled up with Steve when he wakes up. Cat Steve hasn’t moved from his chest. When Steve shifts, she sits up, and when he starts to get up she clings to his shirt with her claws, climbing up to perch on his shoulder. Pets had never really been something that Steve had considered before this, but he kind of likes it.

Bucky is already up when Steve gets to the kitchen. He’s filled the cat bowls with food and water. He’s wearing a t-shirt that does very little to hide the breadth of his chest, and the hair on the left side of his head is standing straight up. Cat Steve stands up on Steve’s shoulder, wiggling her butt.

“Morning,” Steve says, rather than saying what he wants to, which is something about how cozy Bucky looks and how badly Steve wants to curl up with him. “Did you—sleep well?”

Bucky shrugs a shoulder. “Yeah, on and off,” he says. “The cats didn’t keep you up, did they?”

“No.” Steve flips on the coffeemaker, trying not to jump when Cat Steve leaps off his shoulder to the counter and then to the floor in the direction of the food. “Cat Steve slept on my chest all night.”

Looking down at Cat Steve, Bucky nudges her with his foot. She doesn’t even look up from her food. “You’re such a weird cat, Steve,” he tells her. “What is it about Human Steve you like so much, huh?”

Steve smiles. It’s strange that he feels so validated by a cat liking him. Bucky smirks at him and walks past, lightly bodychecking him as he does. “You hungry?” Steve asks.

Bucky’s already in the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs, some cheese, an onion, and the bacon. “Oh,” he says, “I—sorry. I should have asked.”

“You don’t—that’s not what I—” Steve licks his lips, his words tangled up behind his teeth—“you don’t have to ask, Bucky. What’s mine is yours. Always has been. You know that.”

The smile that Bucky gives him is tentative, like he’s not sure that he knows what Steve’s telling him, or like he’s not sure that he wants what Steve’s offering. Steve turns back to the coffeemaker so he doesn’t have to look at him. “Just like old times, huh?” Bucky asks, and Steve hears him put down the eggs and start opening cabinets, probably looking for a pan. “It’ll be just like the Great Depression all over again.”

Not _just_ like old times, but Steve’s not about to argue the point. He laughs, hoping he sounds normal, and pulls two coffee mugs from the cupboard.

 

A day after they move Bucky and the cats in, Tony knocks on their door. He takes one step into the apartment and pauses, his eyes wide. “Holy shit,” he mutters, “ _cats_.”

Bucky sticks his head in from the living room, a cat on his shoulder. “They’re my friends, so watch what you say,” he says.

“I was,” Tony says, his voice weak, “I was just going to ask if I could move you guys.”

Steve raises his eyebrows, his hands already busy preparing Tony a coffee. “Like, all of us?”

“Y—yes.” Tony flails a little as a cat runs under his feet. “Bruce is allergic, it turns out, and in another hour he’s going to sneeze his way into the Hulk. I think we’d all rather avoid that, wouldn’t we?”

“Can you move us somewhere where the cats can get outside?”

Tony turns to look at Bucky, standing behind him. “You have a cat hat.”

“I know.” Steve can tell that Bucky’s yanking Tony’s chain, but he’s not sure Tony can tell that the expression on his face is completely fake. Tony takes half a step backward, his heel kicking a cat, which yowls angrily and runs off. Bucky’s expression closes even more.

“Outside. Yes. Cats. Outside.” Tony clears his throat, and Steve takes pity on him and passes over the espresso. He sucks the whole thing down. “I’ll—I can make them a little playground, too. For when it’s cold out and stuff. Yeah. I’ll. I’ll go start on that. And FRIDAY will help you pack and—and show you where you’ll be moving to. It’s a unit that vents straight to the outdoors.” Shoving the espresso cup back into Steve’s hand, he shuffles fast to the door, clearly trying not to pick up his feet so he doesn’t kick another cat.

As soon as the front door shuts behind him, Bucky snorts a laugh, reaching up and taking Pepper Spray off his head for some kisses. “You hear that?” he tells her. “We’re going to be able to go outside again soon. Won’t that be nice?”

It doesn’t take very long to pack. Bucky, of course, hasn’t spread out too much yet, and Steve’s been living what Nat calls an “emo-Spartan” lifestyle for quite a while now. In barely an hour they’re walking the path that FRIDAY has marked off for them, down to the third floor. They’re lugging the cat carrier between them again, their luggage whisked off into a service elevator by three robots.

“You know,” Bucky says when they finally put down the cat carrier outside their new apartment, the door marked with flashing red, white, and blue lights, crouching and peering into it, “you guys could be grateful for once. You’re going to be able to go outside again. I gave you catnip. The Ironed Man is going to build you a playground. Your life is pretty good.”

“Iron Man,” Steve corrects automatically, opening the door. The lights stop flashing.

“What?”

Squatting so he can pick up the carrier without slipping a disk, Steve carries the box of screaming fur inside. “He’s called Iron Man.”

Bucky trails him in, pointing to the left so Steve doesn’t trip over their suitcases. “I know. But just think of his face when I call him the Ironed Man. Just think about it. For a second.”

 

It’s strange how quickly Steve becomes a nap person when there’s always at least one cat sitting on him that he can’t disturb. For all Bucky loves the cats, though, he doesn’t seem to have the same hesitations about making them move when he wants to, and Steve wakes to an empty apartment pretty frequently, Cat Steve kneading imaginary bread dough on his chest.

In the time that he’s been travelling, it seems Bucky’s learned to enjoy cooking, so almost every time he gets home he’s got some new interesting spice or kitchen gadget to test out. Sometimes Steve helps him, but mostly he sits at the bar and watches, tells Bucky about the book he’s reading or Thor’s updates about the hunt for the new Asgard, sketches or oils his gloves.

He likes it, loves it really, only it’s not nearly enough. It _is_ just like old times, mostly—he and Bucky living together again, their domestic rhythms falling so easily into what they’d always been—but there’s a gaping empty space next to Steve on his California king at night, and Bucky shows no indication that he either remembers or wants to fill it.

The only other indication that anything’s changed, besides Bucky’s new arm, Steve’s giant body, and, well, the future, is that there’s a lot more animal hair floating around than there used to be. Even with FRIDAY filtering the air and running several little robot vacuums through the place every four hours, little tumbleweeds of cat hair build up in the corners, and a perpetual fuzz exists on pretty much all the mildly rubbery objects in the place. Steve comments on it once, and only once, because Bucky gives him a very serious look and says, “it’s so I know who I belong to, Human Steve. The cats are my handlers now,” and Steve just, he just can’t fucking handle that.

Steve chokes on his coffee, spewing it out his nose and mouth and splattering the table. Grimacing, Bucky jerks back, shielding the mouth of his own mug. “Come on, Rogers,” he says as Steve wipes frantically at his streaming eyes, “pull yourself together.”

Pulling in a great heaving breath, Steve sits back, taking his napkin from under his plate and blowing his nose into it. “Don’t just—don’t just _say_ shit like that, Bucky,” he snaps.

“Why not?” Bucky sets his coffee cup down and rubs Potato between the eyes. “It’s what you deserve for being a dumb shit. They’re _cats_. They’re going to shed.”

“ _That’s not what I meant_.”

“What do you think?” Bucky asks Potato, leaning over and kissing her on top of her head. He looks up through his eyelashes and smirks at Steve. “You think he’s smarter than he looks?”

Gritting his teeth, trying to ground himself when that look makes him feel like a boat in an open and uncharted sea, Steve glares. “Jackass,” he mutters.

Bucky flat out grins at that. “Human Steve, the only reason you and I became friends was because we were both such shitheads that nobody else could stand us,” he says. “And don’t pretend otherwise. I remember that much, at least.”

“That’s not true!” Steve protests.

“It is, Human Steve,” Bucky says, very seriously. “It is true. I’m sorry to have to be the one to break the news to you.”

“I…” Steve looks down next to his chair, where Cat Steve has paused, looking up at him and wiggling her butt. He sits back in his chair and she leaps neatly into his lap. “It’s not true,” Steve says. “People liked you just fine.”

Bucky snorts. “No, they fucking didn’t.” He laughs out loud, tipping his head back to do it, Potato cradled close to his chest. “I remember—I remember Jenny Curran once telling me she’d have liked me better if I didn’t hang out with you, though.”

“Jenny Curran? The one with the—?” Steve makes a motion with his hands, muscle memory.

“Yeah, sport.” Bucky makes the same motion, his hands at least F-cups over his chest. “The one with the. _God_ , she hated you.”

Steve makes a face. “I hated her right back,” he says. He remembers it, the visceral twist in his gut as Jenny Curran with the huge ones put her hand on Bucky’s arm and asked him to walk her to the water fountain. Bucky’d arched an eyebrow at Steve and done it, but he’d returned alone just a few minutes later.

“You did?” Bucky asks then, blinking at him. “Why?”

Hesitating, Steve pets Cat Steve as she rubs her face against his chin. “You spent all of that summer with Jenny and her cousin Lizzie, remember?” he asks, and doesn’t say: _you used to come back and tell me all about her giant gazongas and how they felt and I couldn’t stand it_. That was before either of them had figured their shit out, before they’d gotten drunk on Steve’s mom’s bottle of cheap sinful rye and Steve had mustered up all his courage and kissed Bucky, hard. He does say: “And I was so sick and bored stuck in bed.”

Bucky nods a little, sucking on his bottom lip. “Oh yeah, that’s right. You were always so spitting mad when I told you about those nights.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve sips his coffee, careful not to choke this time. “You gloated _so much_. Like a jackass.”

 

Tony drops by to unveil the kitty playground a few days after they move downstairs. He stands in the hallway outside their front door until Bucky impatiently waves him in, blocking Garotte and Madrid from sneaking out with his foot. “Take off your shoes,” he orders Tony, and gestures to the cardboard box that’s been sitting in the corner of the foyer since the cats realized they liked it. There are currently six of them piled in there, curiously sticking their heads up to look at Tony. “And pick up a cat, too.”

Tony, to his credit, does as he’s told, holding a meowing Springfield 1903 between both hands like he’s never picked up a living creature ever in his life before. Steve’s not sure that’s actually false. “It’s—now what?” he asks.

Grimacing, Bucky walks over to him, shifting Photon, Concrete, and the Duchess into one arm and slinging Chevy over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes so he can take Springie from him. “Cross your arms,” he tells Tony, like he knows this is going to have to be a multi-step process. “Okay, now looser. Looser. Little looser.” When Tony’s arms are in a nearly correct approximation of a cradle, he passes Springie back over. “Good. Now what do you want?”

“The playground is ready,” Tony says. He really seems frightened of Bucky, which is kind of incredible given how many cats Bucky’s currently being licked by. Springie is already purring, stretching up in Tony’s arms to rub his whiskers against Tony’s whiskers. “Oh. Uh. Hi.”

“Can we see it?” Bucky asks, then tickles Photon’s chin. “You guys wanna see your new exercise space? You better use it. The Ironed Man built it just for you.”

Tony goes white, then red, and Steve leans against the wall, wondering if he’s ever going to pick up on the fact that Bucky’s joking. “Yeah,” Tony says, “uh, yeah, yes. Let’s go. Should we…? Well, I guess we can. The cats can follow us, right?”

They can, but Steve picks up M1A1 Flamethrower, Madrid, and Mrs. Nesbitt as he walks past them, figuring that the more cats are carried that direction, the more the others will want to follow. The playground is through the next door down, a cat door installed at the bottom that opens by motion sensor. “Will they…?” Tony asks. “I mean, do cats, like, know that that’s a them door?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, crouching. He shoves Chevy through the door and then pulls him back out, then pushes him through again. “See? This is your door. It’s for you guys.” He leaves Chevy on the other side of it and starts grabbing cats, unceremoniously stuffing them through the cat door as fast as possible so they don’t escape back out.

“ _God_ , there are so many,” Tony mumbles, as if to himself, then shuffles Springie into one arm so he can open the human door.

It’s basically an entire apartment that he’s converted into three large rooms full of tubes, stairs, scratching posts, platforms, and boxes. Chevy’s already scaled up to the highest spot, and he’s standing on top of it like he’s preparing to leap off. Steve puts down his cats, which are squirming to be let go. Cat Steve jumps off the top of his head, where she’d been balanced, and all four of them, plus the others that have followed them down the hall, start to sniff their way around the place.

“So, uh, yeah,” Tony says, waving a hand around. Springfield 1903 hasn’t finished exploring him yet. “The floor is sand, right, but I’ve got some robots that will come through and clean up. Are they—” he looks around at them all, aghast—“are they all fixed?”

“Hm? Yeah,” Bucky says, halfway toward the next room over. Some of the tubes go right through the walls. He doesn’t elaborate, and soon enough it’s just Steve and Tony standing by the front door.

“He sure is something,” Tony mutters. He seems not to notice that Springie has settled into his arms, purring.

“Isn’t he?” Steve replies. He pulls out his phone and takes a picture of Tony and the cat. “Thanks for doing this, Tony.”

Tony shrugs awkwardly. “Oh, sure, sure. You know. It’s the kind of project I like to relax with. No thinking involved.” He looks down at Springie and carefully runs two fingers over his ears. Springie meows and snuggles in. “Pepper likes cats, you know. I almost bought her one last year for Christmas, but then she said she didn’t want to go to a breeder, so I—” he shrugs. “Well, it kind of fell by the wayside. I didn’t have time to go to a shelter and everything.”

“She’s welcome to come by anytime,” Steve says. “I don’t know if you can tell, but Bucky’s perfectly happy to share the cats. Wants to, even.”

“Yeah.” Tony pets Springie again. “Yeah.”

 

That afternoon Steve’s called to a mission, something to do with one of Doctor Strange’s experiments going very awry. He has about four minutes to run back to the apartment to grab his go bag and say goodbye to Bucky, but it’s not long enough to really explain or make sure Bucky will be alright without him. Instead he sends a message to Pepper on his way out, asking her to run by and introduce herself at some point, and the next thing he knows, he’s in the Quinjet with T’Challa on his way to Papua New Guinea.

Twelve hours after he’s boarded the Quinjet, he gets a text from Bucky: _Steve was inconsolable last night. Stood outside ur room and screamed for hours. Think she misses u._

Sighing, Steve taps out a reply. _Missed her too. Sorry she kept you up._

 _She didn’t_ , Bucky replies, and then, _Well actually_ , and then, _she did but eventually she let me take her to my bed. i dont think it will last when u get back._ _Here look_.

Four minutes later, Steve sends: _I’m not getting anything._

_Sry yeah im getting an error msg 2. Pic wont send._

Steve glares out the window of the jet. Papua New Guinea is stunning, lush, but if he’s going to have to last this whole time with shit cell service… He thinks about taking the jet up a few hundred feet and throwing his phone out the window. _It’s fine_ , he types. _Thanks for taking care of her._

 _Ain’t no thang_.

Steve smiles and tucks his phone away. He’s supposed to meet Doctor Strange in ten.

 

Four and a half days later he gets another text, though the send time from Bucky is ages ago: _left ur door open last night but steve still yelled a lot. i took a video but i guess ill just show u when u get back._

Steve makes a face at his phone. _Didn’t you bring her to your bed?_

He gets no response for a good twelve hours, then: _I tried. In the video im just chasing her around ur room. she rly hates me tho._

 _I’m sure she doesn’t_ , Steve sends. Cat Steve doesn’t hate Bucky. He was her first dad.

 _Well she sure is acting like it_ , Bucky replies. _She kept giving me this look like why wont u bring him back i know u know where he is. I dont speak cat but im p sure thats what she was yelling at me too._

Steve squeezes his phone so hard it creaks, and he releases it suddenly, not wanting to break it. It falls to the floor of the jet; across the hall in the other bunk, he hears T’Challa call, “Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Steve calls back, stooping and picking up his phone. It’s got a new scuff mark on the back. “I’m fine, yeah.” _I’m so sorry_ , he types. _I was planning to have more time to help you get the cats settled in before I went on another mission. I don’t even want to be here._

 _Someones gotta save the world, human steve_.

Steve swallows and plugs his phone in to charge, then arranges his suit next to the bed in case of an attack in the night. He climbs into bed, facing away from his phone, and curls his knees up into the space where Cat Steve normally sleeps.

 

Another twelve days later, Bucky sends him another update. _Me and steve slept in ur bed last night. ill wash the sheets before u get home. Just let me know when that is._

“Steve.” Steve looks up; T’Challa is looking at him from across the little dinner table, folded out from the Quinjet wall. “Is everything alright? You are looking very sad.”

Closing his eyes for a second, Steve puts down his fork. “Yeah,” he says. “Just, just Bucky. Telling me about the cats.”

T’Challa nods. “I see. Nakia does the same for me sometimes.”

“I can’t even get the pictures because the cell signal is so bad,” Steve says. “I’m not even sure when he sent this one. It could have been two weeks ago, for all I know.” He turns to his phone and sends, _I don’t know yet. There’s a lot to deal with here. Did she keep you up again?_

_not as much. easier when im there rather than making her come to my bed. she only cries a little now. hogs ur whole pillow tho._

“I guess Cat Steve really misses me,” Steve tells T’Challa. “She’s been keeping Bucky up at night looking for me.” _Maybe you could try wearing my clothes?_ he sends Bucky. _She might think you’re me?_

Steve manages one bite while Bucky’s little avatar types. _I think shes smarter than that but ill try._

He and T’Challa finish their meal in silence. It’s been a shit day, spent sprinting all over Port Moresby stepping on evil sentient cabbages and arguing with Stephen about the ethics of the whole matter. Steve’s body is still thrumming with dull pain, left over from whatever venom the cabbages bit with. Neither of them are in much of a talking mood, and Steve steps into his little bunk cabin and shuts the door so he can shower.

Toweling off his face after, Steve pokes his phone, waking the screen to show him three new texts from Bucky:

_Look at how much all these cats miss u._

_oh wait._

_There are so many cats on ur bed rn. thats all the picture is._

Steve throws his wet towel at the shower box, knowing tomorrow he’s going to be mad at himself for not hanging it to dry, and kicks his mattress before climbing into it. He grabs his phone and types, _FUCK Dr Strange I want to come home_ , and puts it on silent so he doesn’t have to know if Bucky texts him back.

In the morning there’s a text from Bucky that’s nothing but a frowny face. When he opens his cabin door, T’Challa’s already there, shining a spot off the front of his mask. “Can you handle it for an hour or so?” Steve asks, clipping his own helmet. “I need to have a chat with Stephen.”

T’Challa eyes the shield Steve’s just picked up. “I can,” he says, and leaves it at that. Steve’s grateful, because he doesn’t really want to have to explain to a king that he’s off to beat Stephen Strange’s asshole face in.

Eighteen minutes later, they’re taking off for New York.

 

Somewhere over the Rockies Steve finally gets a real amount of cell signal back, and a flood of messages arrives: from Pepper, telling him how much she enjoyed her first meeting with Bucky; from Nat, asking him how the mission was going; and from Bucky himself, four pictures he’d sent. In one, Cat Steve sits outside Steve’s bedroom door, her mouth open in a meow; in the next, she’s stretched upward, her paws on the door itself, claws out. Then there’s the clawmarks in the door’s paint. Last is a shot of what looks like pretty much every single cat who regularly visits them, sprawled out on Steve’s bed.

When he finally gets back to Stark Tower, a little battered, jetlagged, ready for a shower and a beer with Bucky before he crashes, the apartment is empty—or, well, Bucky’s not there. Sighing, Steve dodges cats—bigger than they’d been when he left, and bigger than they were in all those pictures—to get to the shower, because if he sits down now he won’t have the energy to get up for a good few hours. As it is his shower barely lasts ten minutes, just long enough to scrub down before he stumbles out and into his favorite pair of pyjamas. His bed is made, military-tight, and he walks over to smell the pillow. It’s all clean, even though Bucky hadn’t responded when Steve had texted to let him know he was on his way back. He thinks about texting T’Challa, who’s going to spend a week or so here in New York and fly Shuri out for a visit, but he’s even too exhausted for that.

It’s not until he finally collapses into a seat on the couch that Cat Steve appears. “Hey, sweetie,” Steve murmurs, mustering up the energy to sit up and reach for her. She dances out of his reach, meowing loudly. “C’mere, Cat Steve.”

Cat Steve plonks her butt down on the carpet and yells.

Sighing, Steve reaches a hand out toward her. “What is it, honey? It’s me, you know me. I’m Human Steve, remember?” The look she gives him is nothing short of a glare. “Is it because I was gone so long? I’m sorry, sweetie, I am.” Her meow ends on a growl. Steve sighs again and sits back, taking a sip of his beer. “Alright, Cat Steve, okay. I’m sorry. I’ll just…I’ll just be over here then. When you’re ready.”

He lies down after a minute, resting his head on the armrest of the sofa, and flips aimlessly through the TV channels, pausing for a few minutes each on a cooking show, a soap opera, a hockey game. When he’s exhausted his patience for looking for something to watch, he returns to the cooking show and drops the remote on the floor. Julius Caesar drapes herself over his waist after a little while, and M1A1 Flamethrower curls up around his feet.

All the kittens have gotten bigger in the time that he’s been gone, and he finds himself looking at Cat Steve instead of the TV. She’s sitting straight-backed on the coffee table, turned away from him, grooming herself. He reaches out to pet her, but only once, because she swipes at him with her claws. After that he leaves her alone.

By the time Bucky gets home, it’s late, and most of the cats have collected themselves around him. He hears the front door shut, Bucky’s off-key humming as he takes off his shoes. A few of the cats get up and trot out of the living room in that direction. Steve thinks about it, too, but he’s feeling so exhausted that he eventually decides not to. Plus, there are too many cats sleeping on him, and he can’t wake them. Also he’s pretty sure Bobby Flay is about to get his ass kicked by a plucky young chef from San Antonio.

Anyhow, Bucky finds him soon enough, leaning against the doorway, arms crossed. “So you’re home,” he says.

“Mm.” Steve barely even moves. “I texted you.”

“I saw.”

“Where were you?” Steve asks, not because he’s jealous. Just curious, is all.

Bucky looks nice, in a greyish collared shirt and dark jeans. “I was having dinner with Pepper.”

“Oh?” Bucky’s acting strangely, stand-offish, and Steve’s so tired and so lonely, but he can’t help being curious. “Are you guys, like, friends now?”

Bucky shrugs. “I like her. She’s sharp as a tack.” Steve nods; she is that, and more, and he’ll have to text her to thank her for keeping Bucky company. “I know you put her up to being my friend.”

“I thought you guys might like each other, that’s all.”

After a long moment, Bucky nods. “You were right,” he admits. “What’s with Steve?”

Steve sighs, and then cringes inside his head. He’s lonely, yeah, but he sounds so _pathetic_. “I think she’s mad that I was gone so long,” he says. “She yelled at me when I first got home, and now she’s giving me the silent treatment.” Finally Bucky comes into the room, leaning down and picking up Cat Steve on his way to the armchair. “She finally warm up to you?”

Cradling her in his arms, Bucky props his feet up on the table. “A little.” Steve stares over at the two of them; Bucky’s looking pointedly at the television. Cat Steve, on the other hand, is looking pointedly at Steve, as if to make sure he knows what he’s missing.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again. “I know there wasn’t much notice before I left.” He’s not sure if he’s saying it to Cat Steve, or to Bucky.

Bucky looks down at Cat Steve and brings her up toward his face so he can kiss her. “We managed,” he says.

“Yeah, but…” Steve sighs, not knowing how to make it better. “You were just getting settled in. I didn’t expect to be gone so long. I should have—I don’t know, I should have turned it down. Or…something. I...I missed you. All of you. The—the cats got so big while I was gone.” Still Bucky doesn’t look at him. He just shrugs. Steve sits up, dislodging Concrete and Photon, and picks up the remote and his empty beer bottle off the floor. “I’m—going to go to bed. Goodnight, Bucky.”

He leaves the remote on the armrest of Bucky’s chair and takes his beer bottle out to the recycle bin under the kitchen sink, then takes a route to get to his bedroom that avoids the living room. He brushes his teeth and leaves his bedroom door cracked, enough for a cat to slip through. It’s probably too much to hope for Cat Steve, but he’s sure at least a couple other cats will join him.

 

For all Steve’s sure he’ll be lying awake for hours, thinking about Bucky in the next room over, it seems only seconds after he puts his head down that the sun is waking him the next morning. He shifts, feeling one cat lying on his left thigh, another wound into a ball at the top of his spine. A third is curled up around the back of his head.

He moves again, and the one on his back leaps off, onto the mattress and then the floor. The cat on his head makes a curious sound and licks his scalp. Steve brings up one hand and pats at it, clumsy, wanting to go back to sleep.

His stomach chooses that moment to growl insistently. The cat on his leg jerks up and runs off. “Sorry,” Steve mutters into his pillow, still gently scratching at the cat on his skull. It takes him several minutes to notice that there’s no tail winding around his fingers, and he jerks up to find Cat Steve blinking sleepily at him. “Oh. Hi. So you’ve forgiven me?”

She licks his nose in response.

Steve can’t help but grin, sticking his face into her fur. She licks his ear, and he laughs a little, collecting her up into his arms and getting up. He carries her with him out of the bedroom and through the living room, so caught up in her playful wriggling that he forgets all about Bucky’s cat-like cold shoulder last night. Forgets, that is, until he’s standing in the kitchen looking at Bucky reading the newspaper at the table.

“Oh.” Steve hesitates, not sure that Bucky will have forgiven him the same way Cat Steve has. “I…good morning.”

“Morning,” Bucky replies, nothing in his tone giving away how he’s feeling. His eyes follow Steve as he carries Cat Steve to the coffeemaker with him and then to the table. She slings herself around Steve’s neck like a towel while Steve sips at his coffee. “So we’re all feeling better, huh?”

“Guess so,” Steve says, reaching up and petting Cat Steve. He stops pretty quickly, feeling like a wealthy woman wearing a fox fur.

Bucky looks at them for a long moment, then puts aside the newspaper. “How was the mission? Pepper said something about venomous biting cabbages?”

“I don’t know how Doctor Strange managed to make cabbages sentient, but—yeah.” Steve takes a long drink of coffee and sinks a little lower in his seat. “And they were _mean_ , Buck, you wouldn’t believe.”

“Mean cabbages?” Bucky asks, clearly trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, really—really violent, cunning things,” Steve mutters. “And vindictive, too. Not that any of that should be surprising, given what Stephen is like.”

Bucky cocks his head, nodding. “Did you get bit at all?”

“Couple times.” Bucky squints at him; Steve holds his arm out to the side so Bucky can see the bite marks on the inside of his bicep. They’re scars already, and those will be gone in a day or two. Bucky grimaces. “It didn’t affect me the same,” Steve explains. “I think that’s why they sent me. It was shitty, but I didn’t, you know, die.”

“Are you sure?” Bucky asks. “I’m not talking to Zombie Steve right now? I could have sworn…”

Steve grins. “Just Human Steve this time. Sorry.”

Throwing up his hands, Bucky shakes his head in disappointment. “Bummer. I was really looking forward to Zombie Steve.” He leans forward, tickling Cat Steve under her chin. “Wasn’t I, Steve? I was, yeah, sweetheart.”

Steve tries not to breathe. Bucky used to call him sweetheart. Right now he doesn’t even seem to notice Steve, too busy obliging Cat Steve as she tips her head this way and that for scritches.

“Oh,” Steve says, remembering his conversation with T’Challa from their ride back the day before. “T’Challa’s staying in the tower somewhere. He said he brought some stuff for the cats, and that Shuri’s on her way in from California today too.”

Bucky grins. “Great!” he says, and gets up. “You want some pancakes? I saw this recipe the other day for ricotta pancakes, but I thought I’d wait to try them until you got back. And I’ve got a little leftover strawberry coulis from when I made cheesecake for Pepper the other day.”

Steve aches. “Yeah,” he says, trying to keep the longing out of his voice. “Yeah, let’s try it.”

They’re just finishing the batter when T’Challa and Shuri arrive. By the time they’ve made their way into the kitchen, T’Challa’s got eight cats either climbing him or in his arms; Shuri’s not far behind, already talking to Sphaerodactylus Ariasae.

Bucky sets down his spatula, giving Shuri a kiss on top of her head and turning to pull T’Challa into a big, close, long hug. Shuri leans on the counter next to Steve; Cat Steve, on his shoulder, leans over to sniff at her. “He looks good,” Shuri comments under her breath, waving Sphaerodactylus Ariasae a little in Bucky’s direction.

“Yeah, he—I mean,” Steve turns to look at her. She’s smirking at him knowingly. “Oh, you suck.”

“Have you told him?” she asks. Steve shakes his head mutely. “Then is it really me who sucks?”

She swans off to inspect the batter while Steve makes a face at her back. Bucky and T’Challa are talking about the cats now, both of them snuggling several at the same time like parodies of Dr. No. Feeling pathetic and sad, Steve follows Shuri to the stove and starts the first pancake. “How’s California?” Steve asks.

“I like it,” she tells him, climbing up onto the counter and crossing her ankles, Sphaerodactylus Ariasae curling up on her lap and tipping his head up for scratches. “I’m working with some great kids. I miss home, though. And I might have a hard time leaving this darling.”

At that moment, Bucky sneaks up on Steve’s other side, reaching for the spatula. “I’ll take over,” he says, “shoo, Human Steve. I don’t want you to burn them.”

Backing off, Steve goes to shake T’Challa’s hand. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, teeming with cats. “I love this place,” he tells Steve, laughing. “I left a bag full of gifts by the door, but I got distracted. Would you…?”

“I’ll get it,” Steve volunteers.

The bag is actually a suitcase—a big one—and it’s stuffed so full that it’s not even zipped all the way shut. Steve rolls it into the kitchen, pausing in the doorway to watch Bucky throw his head back, laughing at something Shuri must have said. She’s standing beside him at the stove, and he throws an arm around her neck, leaning on her as he laughs. He presses another kiss to her forehead.

Steve swallows. Bucky has officially touched Shuri—not to mention T’Challa—more in the ten minutes they’ve been here than he’s touched Steve in the weeks that they’ve been living together. Granted, Steve’s been gone for three weeks, but still. He’s kissed the cats and now Shuri but Steve? Steve’s still waiting.

 

After breakfast Steve pulls on his running gear, ignoring Bucky when he tells him he’s going to cramp up. “It’s too nice out,” Steve lies, “I just want to be outside for a while.”

Cat Steve, Julius Caesar, Knife, and the Duchess follow him into the elevator, and they ride together in silence. In the lobby, Knife and Julius Caesar head one way; the Duchess another; Cat Steve follows Steve out the front exit, meowing at him. Steve puts in his headphones. “I’ll see you in a bit, Cat Steve,” he tells her, and takes off.

He doesn’t think too hard about where he’s going; he just wants to put some distance between himself and his emotions. He’s in Yonkers before he realizes it isn’t working. Stopping by the waterfront, he sits on a bench and looks out at the water, the glittering expanse of the Hudson, mad at himself. And Bucky, too, even though he knows he shouldn’t be.

The last indication he’d had that Bucky might remember what they’d once been was back on a little jet heading for Siberia. It hadn’t been anything more than the softness in a glance, the brush of Bucky’s hand on the back of his neck, and Steve wonders sometimes if he’s even remembering it correctly. Maybe it had meant nothing.

But maybe it hadn’t: maybe Bucky’s last trip to cryo had somehow iced it all from his mind. Maybe whatever Shuri had developed to help him had accidentally grabbed those memories as well. Maybe—and Steve swallows, gritting his teeth so hard that they ache—maybe Bucky just doesn’t want it anymore.

Shuri sends him a picture while he’s sitting there; in it, Bucky and T’Challa are sprawled together on the loveseat, napping. Bucky’s curled up around T’Challa, legs over his lap, head on his shoulder. Most of the cats are napping with them. Before he even thinks about it, Steve’s on his feet, using his phone as a skipping stone. It hops eight times before vanishing into the water. For a second he stares down at his hands, then gives up on wondering why he’d done that and sits back down.

The sun is high when he finally gets off the bench and starts back south. He doesn’t run particularly fast. He doesn’t actually feel like going back at all, but he can’t very well just leave, either. He doesn’t have his wallet and now his phone’s gone, too.

When he gets back to Stark Tower, Cat Steve is sitting outside, ignoring a woman crouched a few feet away trying to lure her in with an open can of tuna. As Steve walks past, Cat Steve falls into step with him, looking up at him and meowing. “Yeah,” Steve agrees as they join an elevator full of people heading up. “I know, I know.”

Bucky, T’Challa, and Shuri are all sitting on the floor in the living room when Steve and Cat Steve arrive, trailing multiple laser pointers around the room while the cats go completely bonkers chasing them. Cat Steve paws at one idly, but trots through the living room with Steve instead.

“You were gone forever,” Bucky says, watching Steve walk past. “I made you lunch. It’s—it’s in the fridge, if you want it.”

“Thanks.” Steve doesn’t stop walking, barely glances over his shoulder. “I’m not hungry. I’ll have it later.”

He showers and then stands in his bedroom for a while, hands in his pockets, Cat Steve perched on his shoulder, looking out the window and trying to convince himself to go be social again. He’s actually starving, but he can’t go see Bucky and T’Challa being touchy again. This is where Shuri finds him. He doesn’t hear her until she speaks from behind him. “Did you get the picture I sent you?”

Steve doesn’t turn. “No,” he says. “Must have dropped my phone while I was running—I can’t find it.”

He hears the door shut, and exhales, thinking she’s gone until she appears at his elbow. Somehow he manages not to jump, but it’s a close thing. “You are a bad liar, Rogers,” she says. “Whatever happened to your phone, it was a waste of perfectly good technology.”

“It was a StarkPhone.”

“Oh.” She turns to the window too, and neither of them speak for a moment. “Then, I suppose that’s alright.” Steve snorts. “I have a new phone I was going to ask you to try, anyway. It has lasers.”

“Cool, I love lasers.”

“Me too.”

Sighing, Steve reaches up and rubs one of Cat Steve’s paws. “I should talk to him,” he says. “I should eat, and then I should talk to him.”

“Sounds like something I don’t want to witness,” Shuri says. “Bye.”

Steve listens to her go, hears her call her brother’s name and yell about his promise to take her to the Rockefeller Center. He listens to the siblings saying goodbye to all of the cats, listens as the elevator doors shut. Then he starts psyching himself up to go talk to Bucky.

He’s maybe about to turn and head for the kitchen when Bucky knocks on his open door. He turns; Bucky’s leaning against the doorjamb, hands in his pockets, the Duchess slung over his shoulder. Steve clears his throat. “Hi.”

“Is everything okay?” Bucky asks, the words tumbling out of his mouth like if he doesn’t say them all at once then he won’t say them at all. “Did—I don’t know—did something go wrong? On the mission?”

“What? I, no, the mission was fine.”

“Oh.” Bucky reaches up, careful not to disturb the Duchess, and scratches at the back of his head. “Okay. I—did I do something wrong?”

“No, Buck—of course not, no,” Steve says, taking a step closer. Something like annoyance flashes in Bucky’s face, and he steps back again. “You couldn’t do anything wrong.”

Bucky snorts. “Well, _that’s_ a crock,” he mutters. “What the fuck is wrong with you, then?”

“I,” Steve tries, but he can’t push the words past his throat. “I just.” His stomach interrupts, growling louder than Cat Steve, and Steve seizes on it. “I guess I’m just hungry. I should—” He sidles past Bucky.

“Steve,” Bucky calls. Steve doesn’t turn. “Steve, you fuckin’—get _back_ here, would you?”

Steve thinks about it for a second, thinks about turning and looking Bucky in the eye, maybe kissing him—but he can’t, can’t stand the idea that Bucky might not want him back. He keeps walking.

Bucky’s hand grabs him, yanks him around; Cat Steve goes flying, screaming about it. For once, they both ignore her. “What the _fuck_ , Steve,” Bucky snarls. “I ain’t seen you like this since 1934.”

A stone materializes in Steve’s throat. In 1934 he’d gotten sloshed and kissed Bucky for the first time. He forces himself to speak around it, his voice creaking. “So you do remember.”

“Remember what?” Bucky snaps, “remember you giving me that fucking sad sack look like I insulted your mom? Yeah, that one.” He points at Steve’s face. “Remember you hating Jenny Curran, who was, by the way, a real nice girl? Not that you’d ever have noticed. Just say the words, Steve. Just fuckin’ say ‘em.”

Steve tears his arm away, shoves Bucky hard in the chest. The Duchess leaps off his shoulder as if she knows this is going nowhere nice. “No.” Not if Bucky’s going to be like this, not just not wanting it, but taunting Steve with it. “You don’t want me to say them—you made that real fuckin’ clear. And you don’t want me, either. So why should I?”

Viper-quick, Bucky shoves him right back, baring his teeth. “Who _the fuck_ are you to tell me what I want,” he yells. “When have I ever not wanted you, you fuckin’ shithead? Huh? _When?_ Since you clearly know everything I’ve ever wanted my whole life. You tell me. When in a hundred years of fuckin’ hell have I _ever_ looked up and thought to myself, _you know, I could really go for anything but that asshole Steve Rogers right now_?”

In the span of a blink, all but a thread of Steve’s anger vanishes, and he stares at Bucky, both of them breathing hard. “You could have fuckin’ said it yourself,” he finally says.

Bucky shoves him again, gentler this time. “Oh, get fucked,” he grumbles, brushing past Steve. “You didn’t say anything, either.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, turning, and Bucky pauses mid-step, his back tense. Steve reaches for him, places a hand at the back of his neck, pulls him around, and draws him close to speak low into his ear. “Bucky, are you listening? I’m going to say it, and you’d better be listening.”

A hesitant hand wraps around Steve’s hip. “Yeah.”

This close, Steve can’t help himself, the heat of Bucky’s body, the familiar shape of him. He presses his forehead to Bucky’s temple. “Would I be me if I didn’t want you?” he murmurs. “I wouldn’t know how to exist without it.”

Bucky makes a wounded noise deep in his throat and turns his face in to Steve’s. For the first time in three generations, they kiss: desperate, biting, Bucky’s hand so tight on Steve’s hip it hurts. Delirious, Steve thinks it makes an odd kind of sense. Losing Bucky hurt like nothing he’d ever experienced; so getting him back would have to hurt some, too. He gasps for it, slinging both arms around Bucky’s neck, the two of them stumbling a little.

Just as he’s about to pull away, take Bucky’s hand and drag him into the bedroom, his stomach growls so loud he can actually feel his shirt move against his skin. Bucky leans back to blink at him. “You hungry, Human Steve?” he asks, smirking, his mouth so red that Steve considers saying no.

His stomach protests again. “I guess so.”

Bucky leans back in, his hand cupping the back of Steve’s head, and slides the tip of his nose along Steve’s. “Good thing I held on to some lunch for you,” he says. “Come on. We’ll get it warmed up.”

 

“Hey,” Bucky says as they stand at the door to Steve’s room, looking in. Steve hums a question as he flips on the light. “You want to see that video of me chasing Steve?”

“Yes,” Steve says.

Pulling out his phone, Bucky leads the way to sit on the edge of the bed, thumbing around until he finds the video. Steve sits close, shuffling even closer until his whole thigh is aligned against Bucky’s. He leans over his shoulder, rests his chin there, because he can now, he’s allowed. Bucky’s free hand even reaches up and cups his jaw, his other hand turning his phone on its side as the video starts.

“ _C’mere, Steve_ ,” Bucky’s voice says. Cat Steve glares at the camera, meowing so loud the sound distorts. “ _I know, baby. I know. Your favorite dad went away, but he’ll be back. I promise. In the meantime, you—you can’t go on like this, Steve. You’ve got to go to sleep. C’mon. You can come sleep with me._ ” Bucky’s arm comes into frame, reaching for Cat Steve, but she darts away. Steve can hear Bucky’s sigh. “ _Steve...please, sweetheart. I miss him too, okay? I know._ ”

Steve wraps his arm around Bucky’s waist, rubbing his cheek against Bucky’s shoulder. It’s so cute, and so sad. In the video, Cat Steve hops up onto the bed and stands on Steve’s pillow, meowing plaintively at Bucky. “ _Sweetheart, I know, okay? I’m sorry. How about we stay in here together, huh? We can keep each other company._ ”

Taking the phone from Bucky, Steve pauses the video and gets up to put the phone on the bedside table. When he turns back, Bucky has stood up, and is swinging his arms a little, looking lost. “We don’t…” he says. “If you don’t want to, we don’t have to...you know…”

Steve reaches out, catching Bucky’s hands. The metal one is smooth, as warm as skin. Steve wonders for the first time if Bucky can feel anything with it. “I want anything you want with me,” he tells him.

Bucky reels him in, fast, gathering Steve to his chest and kissing him. “Good,” he says, his voice in Steve’s mouth, “because I want it all.”

They end up on the bed somehow, Bucky propped on one elbow, Steve kneeling over him. Bucky reaches up, cupping his hand around Steve’s hip, and Steve sighs into the kiss, tipping his head for a better angle. “Oh,” Steve mumbles into his lips, “Bucky…”

“I know,” Bucky agrees, “honey, I know. I know.”

Suddenly Steve can’t stand it, can’t stand being apart from Bucky anymore. He sits up, pulling at his own shirt and trying to get Bucky’s off him at the same time, getting all tangled up. “Oh, sweet thing,” Bucky murmurs, and, stuck in the dark of his shirt, it’s so like how things had once been that Steve can’t breathe for it. Bucky’s thumb traces the skin just next to Steve’s waistband, then Steve feels him shift, sit up. His hands run up Steve’s raised arms, catching in the fabric of his shirt and helping him tug it off. Steve can’t help but smile at the fond look on his face. “ _Shit_ , Steve. I love you.”

“I love you too.” Steve leans down, Bucky tipping his face up until they’re kissing again.

Tracing a hand up along Steve’s side, over his ribcage, Bucky rubs almost absently at one of his nipples. Steve gasps. “Missed these,” Bucky murmurs. “Darlin’, I missed these so much.”

Steve can’t help but laugh a little. “Figures that’s the first thing you go for. You always have been…” he pauses, blushing, because it’s one thing when Bucky says it, but another matter altogether to say it himself.

“What, baby? A tits man?”

Neither of them can keep kissing for a second, both snickering too much. “Yeah,” Steve finally manages, “that.”

Chuckling, Bucky flattens his back to the mattress so he can cup both hands over Steve’s chest. “Seventy-something years, and Hydra couldn’t train that out of me.”

Something squirms and quails in Steve’s belly, and he flattens his hands over Bucky’s to still him. “No Hydra in bed,” he says. Bucky licks his lips, rubbing at Steve’s skin with his thumbs. “That’s my one request, Bucky. No Hydra in bed.”

When Bucky slides his hands up to the back of Steve’s neck, Steve doesn’t stop him, his hands falling to Bucky’s wrists and then to his forearms and then to the crooks of his elbows. Bucky draws him down, kisses his forehead and then his nose. “Promise,” he replies. One of his hands returns to Steve’s chest, the other falling to his hip. Steve breathes in, expanding his chest so he fills more of Bucky’s hand, gets more skin contact.

In one neat move, Bucky flips them, Steve landing on his back, gasping. A cat meows indignantly, and Steve looks around in time to see M1A1 Flamethrower leaping off the bed and stalking off. On her way out she passes Photon, Potato, and Spoons, all of whom are slinking in like they’re planning on interrupting.

“Sorry, M1,” Steve calls, but before he can return to what he’d just been planning, Bucky’s pulling out of his arms and getting up. Steve makes a disgruntled noise that’s almost a whine.

“If you get a no Hydra rule, I get a no cats rule,” Bucky grumbles, picking up Photon and Potato and nudging Spoons back with his foot. “Check and make sure there aren’t any others hiding.” He unceremoniously drops the cats outside the door, blocking them from getting back in while Steve peers under the bed.

“We’re good,” Steve says, and as he sits up Bucky shuts the door and comes back to bed.

“Where were we?” Bucky asks, nudging at Steve until he gets out of the way of the covers he’s trying to tug back.

Steve kneels at the edge of the bed, Bucky standing in front of him, and pulls him into a kiss. “You were about to take your shirt off.”

“I was?”

“Pretty sure,” Steve says, already tugging at the hem.

Obligingly, Bucky raises his arms so that Steve can pull his shirt off. After, he lets both arms come to rest around Steve’s shoulders. “I’m so lucky I’ve got you around to remember these things for me.”

Steve pulls back, dodging as Bucky tries to kiss him again. “You’re on thin fuckin’ ice, jackass,” he tells him.

“Why?” Bucky asks, chasing him, grabbing for him. “I didn’t say it. You said no H-Y-D-R-A in bed, so there’s no H-Y-D-R-A. Like you said.”

“I’m not a total moron, you know. I know what that spells.” Steve gets Bucky in a headlock, pulling him around, and suddenly they’re grappling, laughing, Steve wrestling Bucky down onto the bed, and he’d be winning maybe if he weren’t so dizzy with all the contact, Bucky’s skin on his, Bucky’s knee holding down his thigh.

Suddenly he’s flat on his back on the bed, Bucky holding both of his hands down, leaning over him with an exhilarated grin on his face. Steve drags his lower lip between his teeth, his heart like an energetic rabbit kicking at his chest, and picks his head up, trying to crane up far enough to kiss him. He can’t reach, but Bucky leans down to meet him, releasing his hands and stretching out next to him as they make out, slow.

Steve’s head feels like glue by the time Bucky sits up. He looks just as affected, his mouth puffy, his pupils dilated. For a second he just sits there, kneeling over Steve, looking at him. “You okay?” he asks, reaching out and running a hand over Steve’s hip. Steve realizes for the first time that he’s trembling.

It’s—Steve wants him, desperately, wants every part of Bucky to be against every part of himself—but even this feels like almost too much, his whole body humming with everything that’s already in his arms. It feels like it’s been an entire generation since anyone’s touched him with anything but a closed fist or a latex glove. He props himself on one elbow and flattens his hand to Bucky’s thigh, just above his knee. “I—think so,” he says. “I just—I’m not used to being touched. Nobody’s really—you know—I mean. Thor hugs me, sometimes. And Nat. But…”

“Sweetheart.” Bucky traces a fingertip around the edge of Steve’s hand on his leg, not quite touching Steve’s skin. “You ain’t been with anyone since me?”

Steve swallows. “I have, but I—” he blushes when Bucky raises his eyebrows, a smirk growing on his mouth. “It’s been a while, and you’re—I mean, you’re _you_. You know?”

Bucky spreads his hand over his own thigh, his fingers between Steve’s, still not quite touching. Steve chews on his lip, watching as Bucky watches him. “Yeah, sweet love,” Bucky murmurs, “I know.”

Something in Steve feels wobbly; he brings his fingers together, trapping Bucky’s between his. “Thanks, Buck. Thank you.”

Bucky grins at him, leaning over to trace the tip of his nose over the tip of Steve’s. “We don’t gotta do anything you don’t want, sweet love,” he says. “Not ever.”

Steve reaches up, pulling him down into a slow kiss. “I want to spoon,” he tells him, right up against his lips. “I want you to turn off the light and spoon me.”

Laughing, Bucky sits up again to flip off the lamp while Steve turns onto his side, then crowds up behind him, wrapping one arm tight around him. “Good?” Bucky asks, his voice against the spot where Steve’s neck meets his ear. He nods, pulling Bucky’s arm even tighter and curling his hand into Bucky’s palm. “Can I ask you one thing? You don’t have to answer.”

“Yeah?”

Bucky kisses the back of Steve’s neck. “Who’d you sleep with? Anyone I know?”

Hesitating, Steve traces his fingertips up from Bucky’s palm to the ends of his fingers. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “Nat. And Thor, once.” Bucky hums, and panic washes over Steve in a cold wave. “I—you’re not jealous, are you?”

“Hm? No, baby, never.” Bucky’s hand pats at Steve’s chest. “I was just picturing it.”

In the dark Steve can feel himself going red. “And...what do you think?”

Bucky squeezes him. “I think I’d have liked to see it in person, is what I think.”

It’s absurd that this is what makes Steve teary, and he smiles into the dark, rubbing his face against the pillow. “I love you, Bucky.”

Bucky’s lips at the top of Steve’s spine curve into a smile. “Yeah, baby. I love you too.”

 


End file.
